Last Goodbye
by Abagail Snow
Summary: Katniss doesn't say goodbye to Peeta the morning she leaves for the Battle of the Capitol, because she's already done this the night before. Set during Mockingjay.


_AN This is my last entry for **promptsinpanem** and is based on the time in which Peeta is hijacked. It's a songfic with no lyrics, but if you listen to the song "Last Goodbye," hopefully you'll hear the connection. I'll be going on travel for work next week, so I don't know when I'll have my WIP's updated (depends on how well - or poorly - work goes.) Hope you all enjoyed Everlark Week as much as I did! Huge thanks to silvercistern and misshoneywell for organizing it!_

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**Last Goodbye**

Squad 451 ships in the morning. There haven't been any official orders, they don't risk that type of information leaking, there are spies everywhere from both sides and no one can be trusted. There are signs though. One of the smaller hover crafts is removed from the hanger right before sunset, and when Boggs stops by her apartment to check on her, his eyes flit towards her fatigues hanging in the closet and he asks her which bow she prefers best.

She doesn't tell her mother or Prim. They'll have plenty of sleepless nights once she's left, and she doesn't want to burden them with that quite yet. Instead she lies in her sterile white room, staring at the ceiling. It never gets dark enough to sleep properly, (even though they're underground) at least that's what she tells herself. She refuses to admit that she'll never truly be at rest without him. As far as she's concerned, he's dead.

The pearl sits in her palm and she holds it to her cheek. The perfectly smooth surface caresses her skin as she rolls it across her face. She wishes she could capture his full essence in this small bead, but she knows that it's impossible.

The hours tick by, and sleep continues to evade her.

It'll all be over in a week. Maybe two, tops. She'll be flying with Rue and the other Mockingjays, and Peeta, and Prim, and Gale, they'll be free from her poison.

She brings the pearl to her chest, right above her heart, and holds it there. Peeta is out there, somewhere, trapped in his mind, trapped in her heart, she doesn't know. She only knows that she owes it to him, to tell him goodbye.

For a district that's so efficient, they never turn the lights off. At night, they're changed to a dimmer setting, but it's still brighter than any lamp you'd find in District 12. Katniss pads down the various twisting corridors, and uses her newly acquired military clearance to activate the elevator. It's no communicuff, but it serves its purpose when it carries her to the medical ward.

His room isn't as heavily guarded as it used to be, ever since they began to integrate him back into society. The only security is an electronic pad next to the door that reads your hand print. She doubts she's in the system, but she places her palm against the screen anyway, and watches as a beam of light scans from the top of the panel to the bottom and then back up again. The door clicks and creaks open, with little fanfare.

Peeta is no longer restrained by four straps on each arm, but his hands are still cuffed as well as his ankles, and they're joined together to limit his mobility. He sleeps on his back with one arm across his stomach and the other stretched as far to the side as his restraints will allow. One arm as a pillow, the other draped protectively at her waist. She almost gasps aloud at the sight.

It's Peeta. Her Peeta.

The medical cots are barely built for one, but she doesn't care. She tucks herself between his cuffed arms, placing her ear directly over his heart, and holds onto him tightly. She doesn't count the minutes that pass before sleep takes her, but it couldn't be many.

She dreams of their time in the cave, their nights on the train, a perfect afternoon on the roof of the training center, a final kiss on the beach in the arena. This is how she will choose to remember him.

He stirs, and she snaps to alert in an instant. Her heart stops as she waits for the mutt to emerge, and she lays frozen against his chest.

"No nightmares," he says, his voice thick with sleep, but still undeniably Peeta.

Tears form in her eyes, but she's too frightened to look at him. "No nightmares," she confirms.

"Hasn't been that way for a while now," he says. He sounds distant, even though she's tucked snugly in his arms. "When I dream, I always see your face."

She lifts her head so that her chin is resting on his chest and she peers up at him. "Must be awful," she says. She recalls her perfect memories of him and imagines the way the hijacking must twist and manipulate them into something terrifying.

"Sometimes," he says, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "It's different now. It used to frighten me, but now? I don't know…" he closes his eyes tightly and takes a strangled breath. "When you appear in my nightmares, it calms me."

"I'm leaving," she tells him abruptly. "I probably won't be coming back."

"I figured it would be happening soon," he sighs. "So this is the goodbye scene, then?"

"That was the plan," she says, and buries her face into his neck. He doesn't smell like cinnamon and dill anymore, but if she closes her eyes tightly enough, she can make out the scent, and that's enough for her. "I'm not sure how I'll let you go," she says, her voice pained.

"That's always been our problem, hasn't it," he replies sadly. "Imagine how much easier things would be if one of us could just kill the other."

It hurts, but it's true. "The war will take care of that," she says, her lips pressed against the pulse point at his throat.

His breath hitches and his heart begins to beat faster. She's worried that an episode is coming and braces herself. "Katniss," he says in a strangled whisper. "I'm so tired."

She kisses his pulse point, then his jaw, then his cheeks and eyelids, trying to calm him. Finally she finds his lips and for once kisses him out of desire, not consolation. It's desperate and sloppy and taste of salty tears, but she never wants to break it.

"Go to sleep," she tells him, when her breath becomes even again.

He's hesitant, but his eyelids begin to fall lazily. "I want to," he says. "But I know when I wake, you'll be gone." She frowns when she strokes his cheek. "Will you stay with me?"

She rests her head on his chest again. Right above his heartbeat. "Always," she says.

When he's finally asleep, she considers keeping her promise, and waiting till morning before she leaves him. But she doesn't know which Peeta will come out of this slumber, and she doesn't want to tarnish this memory to find out. She slips out of his arms and stands in the doorway of his cell, stroking the perfect white pearl that rests in her pocket. The only version left of Peeta that she'll allow herself to know.

He could return to her, she muses. At another time, in another life. She pushes away the thoughts though and closes the door behind her. The odds have never been in her favor. Why fool herself into thinking this isn't their last goodbye.


End file.
